


Operation CHEER LUKE UP AFTER BESPIN

by Cinderfeather



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Crack and Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Excuse to give Luke Skywalker a Hot Chocolate, F/M, Gen, Han escaped with them on Bespin, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Luke Skywalker Needs A Hug, art therapy, loss of appetite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29416944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinderfeather/pseuds/Cinderfeather
Summary: Leia tries to comfort Luke after what happened on Bespin.Luke keeps practically gift-wrapping the truth to her, but no matter how hard she tries to put the pieces together, she never quite manages to get it.Alternatively: The fic where Luke tries his hand at using the Force to engage in a bit of Art Therapy, and ends up accidentally saving the galaxy as a result.
Relationships: Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker & Han Solo, Leia Organa/Han Solo, Luke Skywalker & Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker & Han Solo
Comments: 35
Kudos: 88





	1. Chapter 1

"Han, I’m worried about Luke. I know he comes in for breakfast late, which I let slide because he barely seems to be able to sleep, and from what his crew tells me I suspect those few extra hours in the morning are usually all he gets. However he only ever seems to eat a small sandwich at lunch. Are you sure he’s even eating enough?” 

Han’s eyes narrowed.

“What do you mean, Princess? I’m always here in the canteen when it’s time to scoop up all the tasty leftovers,” _Han always sleeps late, regardless of the circumstances_ her mind interjected, “ —and I’ve never once seen him out here. I though he was skipping breakfast and having lunch properly with you, since Chewie keeps having to bring my lunch out to me what with all the fixing up I’ve had to do with everything Lando’s goons did to the Falcon.”

“So, he isn’t eating breakfast, barely eating anything for lunch, and only really eating what can sort of pass for a meal with us at dinner when we’re both watching him? In addition to having severe insomnia?”

She cursed under her breath and mentally berated herself for being so caught up in monitoring Han for residual traces of carbon-sickness after they had all somehow managed to escape together on Bespin. She hadn’t been paying enough attention to the trauma Luke had been going through.

She promptly started loading up a tray of food and prepared to head to his dorm to try to persuade him to eat a full and proper meal.

“Fruit,” Han explained, as he dumpted a giant handful of it on her tray. “He likes the jucy fruit. Nothing like that ever grew on Tatooine, so it’s still slightly novel for him,” he explained.

“Go and see the kid now. I’ll go make the him a cup of hot chocolate first, he might drink that too.”

Leia carefully edged the tray down the corridor, careful not to let any of the fruit he had tossed precariously all over it roll off as she dodged past the various rebels going about their business.

When she entered Luke’s room, he looked absolutely terrible. Dark bags circled under his eyes, and all the extra muscle and bulk he’d gained after mysteriously disappearing after the battle of Hoth had wasted away. His movements were slow and sluggish as he tried to shift up from his attempt at resting in an effort to greet her.

She set the tray down beside him. He reached over and began half-heartedly picking at the food, his fingers barely grazing over the fruit.

"What’s wrong with you, Luke?” she asked, after studying him for a few minutes. “It’s like you’ve completely lost all hope.”

“Hope?” Luke asked. He laughed dejectedly.

“Hope was my friend. It was my weapon, my fortress and my ally. It was what let me buckle myself in my X-wing and fire that shot, what made me believe I could switch off my targeting computer and trust in the force. And really do it, really make that shot. And stay focused, even as those TIEs were bearing down on me.”

He picked up one of the larger stone fruits from the tray and just held it, staring at it in his palm.

"Hope let me believe that Ben’s ghost was real, that I wasn’t just hearing voices in my head out of misplaced grief, or anger (delusion.) It gave me courage to plot a course for Dagobah, and not be deterred when Yoda initially refused to train me.”

_Dagobah? Was that where he went? And was Yoda the Jedi who trained him? The name seemed familiar somehow-_

“Hope let helped me persevere through it, helped me believe that I didn’t need to be afraid whenever he talked of the Dark Side, or the dangers of falling to it. It was the courage to keep training and growing in power, despite the shadow that loomed in the background.”

He rolled the peach around between his palms and passed it between his hands, not seeming able to bring it to his mouth. He took a deep breath and continued.

"All because my father had been a Jedi. A powerful one. A hero to the galaxy. And a good person.”

"And Ben, the only Jedi I ever knew for so many years. Calm, wise, ….honourable”, he seemed bite the last word off almost bitterly.

"And Yoda too, since he backed him up and didn’t contradict him. Didn’t try to tell me or warn me about it even as I was leaving to my possible doom, or even damnation.”

 _Warn him about what?_ Leia wondered.

He lifted the peach to his mouth, as if to finally take a bite, but then Leia noticed the look in his eyes was focused on his _hand_, not on the fruit, and they had a subtle widening to them that she knew meant he was reliving those moments all over again.

“And then … Vader. He, … he was _toying_ with me, Leia,” he said as tears formed in his eyes. “I had no chance of winning!”

Leia quickly took both his hands in hers as she slipped the peach back on the tray, squeezing them in the most comforting way she could think of. The unnatural feel of the metal one just mocked her.

"If I had a clearer head I might have tried to run or escape, but I finally had my father’s killer in my grasp, and I couldn’t let go of the chance to kill him.”

"For years I had grown up dreaming that my father was still alive out there, that he would come and take me away, and…” He shook his head free from the thought.

“And then ….”

"Vader started lying to me. He told me things that weren’t true, that —couldn’t possibly be true.” His voice took on a hard edge, as if he were determined to convince himself of it.

"Is Vader lying? Is he telling the truth? I can’t - I don’t know anymore.”

Luke abruptly dropped his hands from her grasp and stood up and began pacing the confines of his room.

“Hope used to be my friend, my ally. Now it’s turned the knife on me. Every morning, after my nightmares, I wake up. And there’s this tiny, blissful moment where I forget everything that’s happened, everything that’s been swirling round in my head.”

He paused for a moment as he stared listlessly at the wall, then crossed his arms and resumed pacing.

“Then I remember. It all rushes back, too much for me to bear. I feel like I’m drowning. But then, a thought sneaks in, and I let myself hope, that it might all be a lie. That everything Ben told me was really true after all, and that awful sense of confirmation I felt when Vader spoke was just a trick of the mind, of the Dark Side. That it’s all just a horrible nightmare I need to somehow wake from.”

"Other days I try to make myself believe it, try to force myself to hit the rock bottom and just accept it, and try to look among the shattered pieces of my life for a small consolation to wrap my life around. And somehow look and see if there’s a way to move forward.”

He shook his head.

"But I can’t. It doesn’t work. It just doesn’t fade into acceptance because I can’t just let go of wondering that it still might all be a lie - that there’s still _hope_ that it’s not real!”

He collapsed back down onto his bunk and buried his head in his hand.

“And so I’m stuck. Unable to move on. Unable to accept, and unable to forget. Every few days, every few hours even, swinging between each extreme, each wave of the cycle trapping me in pain that is just as fresh as when it first began.”

"I can’t even find or speak to Ben anymore. Ever since I left for Bespin, he’s been gone. Is he gone for good? Will I ever see him again?”

He reached under his bed and pulled out the box of jumbled parts he had been collecting to build another lightsaber and began fingering some of them absentmindedly.

"Nor can I bring myself to go back and finish my Jedi training. I don’t even have a lightsaber anymore.”

“The one, tangible thing I had left of my Father. Gone. Completely gone.”

"Whenever I used to be afraid or discouraged, lying awake at night, I used to hold it, and let myself _believe_. I let myself believe that I could be a Jedi, just like him. Just as good and heroic and powerful, and everything would be ok.”

“Now it’s gone, and everything I thought I knew about him with it.”  
He threw the box on the ground and the parts clattered all over the floor.

Leia jolted in surprise but then her mind narrowed in on what he had just said. “What do you mean, Luke?”

Luke averted his eyes and quickly shook her head.

"I can’t tell you, Leia. What if you stop believing in me? What if the _Rebellion_ stops believing in me?”

"Luke!” she gasped. She had been determined to hold her tongue as he spoke, to just listen let him _get it all out_ , but she couldn’t stay silent anymore.

“We don’t place our faith in you based on where you think your hope comes from. Your father is dead. You were the one who did all these things! And you did them without a galaxy full of Jedi to guide you. We trust you because of what we’ve seen inside you, Luke. Not just because of what some people say about you.”

"Don’t worry Luke. You can find hope again. We all believe in you.”

Luke eyed her warily and then turned away from her.

"You won’t. Not for much longer. Not if you heard what he said - not if it’s really true.”

His words chilled her to the bone.

For a brief moment she was back on the Death Star, trapped in Vader’s grasp as he tried all manner of mind games into scaring her into revealing the location of the rebel base.

No. That would not happen here. Whatever fear Vader’s words inspired in Luke, they were not going to cause fear in her.

"No Luke. Let me brave the truth of this with you. Just what did Vader say about your father?”

“He’s… he wasn’t who I thought he was. He wasn’t a good person, Leia.”

He looked back at her, his face scared and conflicted. He leaned forward but then paused, and Leia could have sworn she felt him change his mind about telling her something pivotal.

But then he looked her in the eyes and whispered under his breath.

“Obi-Wan.”

He swallowed.

“Obi-Wan cut him down and left him to die.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally wrote this with Han there, because I totally forgot that after Bespin he wasn’t there with them! However when I tried to rewrite it with Wedge in his place, it just didn’t feel right, so I waved my magic wand and decided that Han escaped with them right there on Cloud City.


	2. Chapter 2

“Obi-Wan cut him down and left him to die.”

 _What? Did _Obi-Wan_ kill his Father?_ Before she could manage to ask him anything else, Han walked in.

He was carrying a giant steaming mug of hot chocolate, and the remainder of an entire basket of fruit he’d apparently swiped from the canteen.

“This stuff’s the real deal, kid. Made with fresh Bantha milk, none of that nasty powder stuff, and then heated gently with the chocolate melted right in. Top that off with little something added to thicken it up and make it nice and creamy, and you’ve got the perfect hot chocolate right here.”

Luke’s eyes lit up and he reached for the mug. He took a few gulps as Han threw his arm around him and playfully ruffled his hair.

Leia opened her mouth to ask him to explain the _bombshell_ he just dropped on her, but before she could say anything, Han suddenly cut in.

“Anyway, who cares if your father was just a stogy old pirate who stole a lightsaber? You’re the real hero kid, and that’s all that matters.”

Luke practically choked on his drink, spraying hot chocolate everywhere.

What? Where did that come from? She had been doing such a good job, listening, not cutting in on him, not jumping to conclusions, _he literally just started telling her exactly what was wrong-_

And then he just waltzes in there, barely overhearing anything, and boldly makes up some pronouncement out of _thin air_ and them proceeds to tell him what to do about it?

Luke calmed himself and blinked at Han in surprise. “What did you say?”

“Don’t worry yourself, kid. Just trying to make you feel better.”

“It’s ok Han,” he said as he took another swig. “I like your perspective.” A smile seemed to play on his lips and a sound that seemed to approach a laugh escaped for the briefest of moments.

Leia eyed him shrewdly, trying to pick up any clue from Luke that would confirm or deny part of what Han had just said.

Perhaps Han was totally wrong about his wild guess he threw out there. But now that he had said it, her thoughts suddenly kept connecting everything Luke said back to it.

_“Now it’s gone, and everything I knew about him with it.”_

So maybe his father hadn’t been a Jedi after all? It would make sense, with the way Luke seemed obsessively idolise him for it.

It was nearly half of the reason he had signed up for the rebellion in the first place, and the driving force behind everything that inspired him to become a Jedi.

Luke set the mug down and hopped off the bed to start tidying up all the scraps of potential lightsaber parts he’d thrown across the room. Han followed suit and knelt down beside him to help.

_“You’d hate me, Leia.”_

Was he worried that she would think that he had just been pretending that his father was a Jedi, just to seem important or get leave to go on special missions? Had he been faking his connection to the force the entire time too? She frowned, turning her memory back on so many of their daring escapes and strange things that helped them that Luke just _knew_.

She watched him drop one of the parts in the box almost as if burned, his eyes glazing over in another flashback, but Han pulled him back by quipping, “At the very least, it looks like you got enough stuff here to make some light- _scissors_. I’m sure Chewie will thank you very much for them.”

Had Vader told him he wasn’t force-sensitive at all? Or at least not enough to ever progress beyond those weird feelings and intuitions he got to become a full Jedi?

Was it all just luck and quick reflexes for him after all? When was there a time where she had unquestionably _seen_ proof without a shadow of a doubt of Luke’s force ability? She’d seen Vader rip the blaster out of Han’s hands with her own eyes, but what about Luke?

Han held up a piece of durasteel that had been bent and twisted in a bizarre fashion. It certainly looked far too big to be a lightsaber part.

“What’s this, Luke?”

Luke quickly grabbed the scrap of metal off him and dropped it in the box. “It’s for-” he cleared his throat, “testing it against when it’s done.”

Luke had told her he’d managed to levitate his lightsaber in the Wampa cave on Hoth, but he’d never had the chance to actually show her before they were both frantically on the run for their lives. Now that they were back she had forgotten to ask him about it again.

_“He wasn’t who I thought he was. He wasn’t a good person.”_

A space pirate would fit that bill, wouldn’t it? Especially a particularally notrorious one.

Luke said his Aunt and Uncle had always told him that his father was a navigator on a spice freighter. But if he’d always believed that his father was somewhat on the wrong side of the law growing up, then why would the possibility of him being a pirate bother him at all?

Luke dropped the last part in the box and then carried it back and pushed it under his bed. He picked up the mug again and began nibbling on a piece of fruit.

Or - she risked a glance at him again.

Had Vader told him his father dealt in slaves?

Slavery ran rampant on Tatooine. She knew Luke hated it on a level she couldn’t truly understand, given her sheltered upbringing on Alderaan. But given the culture that the Desert had seeped into his very bones, then perhaps a truth like that could have been what shattered Luke?

She sighed. At least he seemed to be really enjoying the hot chocolate, he had almost finished the mug.

_"Obi-Wan cut him down and left him to die."_

Did Obi-Wan kill his father? Because he illegally possessed a lightsaber? Or killed a a Jedi to get one? She dimly remembered something about it only being legal for Jedi to carry them during the Republic. Had Obi-Wan had been sent to confiscate it? Perhaps his father had resisted, and Obi-Wan ended up fatally injuring him as a result.

Did that leave Luke orphaned, and result in Obi-Wan fleeing in guilt to Tatooine to bring him to his Aunt and Uncle to live out the rest of his life in exile?

Luke set the finished mug down with a contented sigh and then began trying to dodge bits of fruit that Han had started flicking at him.

It was _eerie_ how all the pieces were fitting together. Was all this wild conjecture that was completely getting away from her? Or had Han hit the nail on the head with _exactly_ what was going on with Luke?

Wait, what if that was the truth and Luke had _already told him_ and he was just leading up to telling it back to her!

She tried to keep a grip on the anger inside her chest as it blossomed away to affection. That blasted smuggler!

She straightened out the last of her thoughts. They needed to find out whether Anakin Skywalker was actually a Jedi, and any indication whether Obi-Wan had been involved in his death. Normally that would just be a simple matter of looking it up on the HoloNet, but unfortunately the Empire had ordered all records pertaining to the Jedi destroyed. Unless…

She turned to face him and smiled.

“Guess what, Luke. We’re in luck. I know how we can find out the truth about your father.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Guess what, Luke. We’re in luck. I know how we can find out the truth about your father.”

She pulled out her datapad and began scanning through it to find the report she needed. 

Luke looked at her, but the look of disillusionment in his eyes never left. “Leia, I’ve been searching the HoloNet nearly every night, and there’s absolutely nothing out there on him.”

Leia ignored him for a moment and kept skimming. Where were they keeping the holo-directories they recovered from the mission to Codassa Prime? There. They were down on hangar B-21.

She smiled wryly. “That - I may be able to help you with.”

She stood up and took stock of what he had eaten. He had drained the mug, eaten most of the fruit on her tray, but hadn’t touched any of the remaining breakfast she had liberally scooped up for him.

She grabbed the peach he had been working himself up to eat before and thrust it into his hands. Then she pointed at the fruit basket Han had brought in.

“That stays in your room. Eat one whenever you feel the slightest bit hungry.” Then she swiped up the tray. The porridge was likely cold by now, and he hadn’t made any move to eat it during her visit. She doubted she would be able to get him to, so she shoved it at Han.

“Take this back to the canteen.”

"I’m not your maid, Your Worship,” he retorted.

She merely raised an eyebrow as she grabbed Luke by the arm tugged him to his feet.

"Come with me, Luke,” she said.

She whirled around on her foot and marched out the door before Han had a chance to protest further.

Luke followed her out of the dorm and stuffed the peach in his overalls as they began to head down through the winding labyrinth that was the current rebel base.

Normally he would be bounding through the halls, often forcing her out of her regal ‘Princess’ gait just to keep up. But he seemed to trail behind her slowly, practically requiring her to slow her pace for him.

She talked as she walked.

"As you know, the Empire ordered all records pertaining to the Jedi destroyed, along with much information about the Republic’s history.”

"However it was not so simple a task to accomplish overnight, and many offline copies of the records survived simply due to being lost for forgotten about.”

“As dissent began to grow, many people began to try to collect every scrap of un-altered history or artefact they could get their hands on. These things would often fetch a high price on the underground-markets.”

"We commonly get people donating stuff like this to us, either as a gift of thanks for our aid, or because the Empire has caught wind of it and they hope that we will be able to look after or make better use of it.”

"The problem is that sorting through and processing all that information takes a lot of time. Facilitating that kind of work usually falls off the bottom of the list of my priorities, generally getting crowded out by things like keeping us alive and supplied with enough food and weapons to survive the next battle.”

“So unfortunately what happens is most of this stuff just ends up as junk. That is, if we don’t turn around and sell them on the underground-markets ourselves.”

They reached the hangar. It was abandoned, save for Wedge and one other rebel supervising a crashed TIE fighter being lowered into the hangar for storage.

A large stack of crates were piled up against the far right side, and numerous amounts of unused droid and ship parts were strewn about haphazardly all over the place.

A mound of unsorted pieces of Stormtrooper armour and various other scraps of uniforms were heaped up in another corner. Only the Imperial standard-issue weapons had the care taken with them to be sorted and set aside safely. It was all used by the rebels used whenever they needed a disguise to go undercover.

The enterance to the landing bay was mostly obscured by trees, making it difficult to take off from, which was why they tended to use it mostly for storing things.

One of the bright sides about being constantly on the run from the Empire was that they never had to worry about disposing of any of the scrap they didn’t need, they could just leave it there for the Empire to worry about next time they had to evacuate.

Why bother to clean house when the Imperials would do it for them because they needed to move every couple of months?

Leia stopped abruptly in the middle of the hangar and Luke nearly collided with her. She turned her head from side to side as she glanced between each end of the room.

“Weren’t these crates stacked up against the opposite side of the hangar?”

"Huh?” said Luke. “Oh! - Er, should they be moved?”

“What? No, I was just a bit disorientated,” she muttered as she pulled out her datapad tapped on it to bring up the report again.

"Well, I can assure you the crates were stacked exactly like this when I left the hangar last night,” said Luke.

She blinked at him. “Wait, you’ve been down here before?”

Luke shifted his feet. “Yes, I come here a lot when I can’t sleep. There’s generally next to no one here and the quiet can help me meditate. Now what were we looking for again?”

She checked her datapad again and found crate number. She motioned him to follow as she side-stepped the empty casing of a mouse droid.

“Over here. It’s in one of these.”

They began picking their way through the various piles of scrap towards some of the crates.

“These crates were nearly left behind on Hoth, I think they survived because people thought they were crates of food or vital medical supplies.”

"Among them are several holo-directories we obtained during a relief mission to Codassa Prime.”

"One of them contains archives from the _Nadia Times_ , a small gossip newspaper that ran on Coruscant before the Empire strangled and regulated all the media.”

“Unlike the other newspapers we salvaged, it mostly focused on coverage of the Jedi.”

She opened one of the crates, revealing the terminal stored inside it.

"It’s not much, just a collection of some run-of-the mill clickbait HoloNet articles, but I think the information is basic enough that you should find what you are looking for.”

She tapped a button, switching on a holographic display that shone overhead.

The cheesy logo for the _Nadia Times_ displayed above them as Luke walked over and opened search menu. His eyes flickered to her awkwardly as he hesitated before he began typing in his first search term.

_Anakin Skywalker_

2,318 results.

A bunch of the most popular articles popped up overhead in holographic form. They had titles like:

_Skywalker’s daring and heroic rescue of Senator from assassination attempt_

_Anakin Skywalker caught moonlighting in Coruscant’s underground pod-races_

_Five-oh-one reasons we want to marry Anakin Skywalker this second_

He skimmed through some of them briefly, occasionally making a face, and then tried a different search term.

_Darth Vader_

0 results.

"No one saw or heard anything of him before the purge started. These records would’ve likely stopped just before the Empire seized power,” Leia explained.

"Yes, but he would’ve had to come from somewhere. I thought Obi-Wan…” he trailed off. Frowning, he entered another search term. 

_Anakin Skywalker AND Obi-Wan Kenobi_

741 results.

He entered a command to sort them by publication date, instead of popularity, and then opened up a handful of articles that Leia could see were dated right before the Republic collapsed.

He began skimming and jumping between several of the results, until he found one that grabbed his full attention. He expanded it so it was the only one taking up the display.

Suddenly he stilled.

“Leia, do you need to keep this TIE fighter around for any reason?” he asked, his voice flat and monotone.

“No, they’ve finished analysing the computer for any frequencies they can use, why?”

“Good.” He didn’t say anymore as he turned away and walked up to it, his gait floating as if he was partially detached from himself.

Leia didn’t want to snoop, but his demeanour was freaking her out. She had to know what he read. Besides, the article was literally hovering in front of her face in giant holographic blue letters.

_Anakin Skywalker performs ‘controlled crash’ of Separatist Flagship on Coruscant._

The article continued: _Teaming up with his old teacher, Obi-Wan Kenobi, the pair of Jedi successfully infiltrated the Flagship and freed the kidnapped Supreme Chancellor of the Republic. They brought the remaining half of the disintegrating ship down do the planet safely, managing to avoid civilian casualties._

She skimmed through the rest:

_While Anakin Skywalker had been knighted several years ago, the pair continued to take many missions together, Kenobi never training another student._

So Luke’s father was a Jedi after all! So he wasn’t a pirate, wasn’t a slaver, wasn’t a fraud, wasn’t a failed Jedi, wasn’t a weak Jedi, and wasn’t a bad person.

Everything was exactly as he’d been told. He didn’t have any reason to be upset anymore.

And would you look at that, he’d even been trained by Obi-Wan.

"NOOOOOOOO!” Luke’s guttural scream tore through the hangar. She suddenly heard a hovering and creaking sound as the TIE _lifted up_ in front of Luke and started hanging there, suspended.

She covered her mouth as the wings began to creak and bend as the cockpit collapsed inward on itself, the wings wrapping round the ball of the center as the whole thing was squeezed, no _crushed_ into a ball…

With a loud crash it suddenly dropped to the ground, and Luke fell to his knees, gasping and panting.

She rushed to his side.

"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT??" 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Luke's point of view! Hopefully if you have any questions about what’s been going on in his head this should clear them up.
> 
> Just be warned, again there is a description of him dealing with his loss of appetite near the end of the chapter, so just be careful if that's something that's triggering for you.

_“While Anakin Skywalker had been knighted several years ago, the pair continued to take many missions together, Kenobi never training another student.”_

_“A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi knights. He betrayed and murdered your father.”_

_“NO,_ I _AM YOUR FATHER.”_

Cold.

Icy.

Pit.

His stomach dropped out from under him and plunged deep into the planet’s core.  


He knew the truth now.

Ben had _lied_ to him.

_“When I learned of Vader’s betrayal, I took it upon myself to destroy him. I ended up giving him the injuries that put him in that suit, but unfortunately I couldn’t bring myself to kill him. He lived on due to my mistake. Now you’re our only hope.”_

Ben had told him this after he had been rattled by the strange vision he had seen in the cave.

Why hadn’t he told him THEN!

 _Obi-Wan_ had given his father a grave and horrific injury and left him for dead.

He and Yoda had primed and set him up to _kill his own father!_

His father.

Who was Lord of the Sith.

He, Luke Skywalker, no Luke _Vader_ , was the son of the most evil and monstrous beings in the galaxy.

His arms shook.

He couldn’t breathe.

Couldn’t think.

Everything felt numb, like he could barely move.

The crates.

Yes, he normally came down here at night and tried to practice lifting them back and forth between the sides of the hangar, but he doubted it would be challenging enough to distract him at the moment.

Deep breaths…

The X-wing. Yes. He needed to feel like he did when he first tried to lift the X-wing out of the swamp.

Worn out and tired to the bone, able to focus on nothing but himself and the object he was a trying to pull towards him. A task so impossible it blotted out anything else.

He didn’t dare touch any of their X-wings here, in case he dropped or damaged it, but then there was that TIE that had just been brought in…

“Leia, do you need to keep this TIE fighter around for any reason?”

He could barely process her reply as he muttered something out and began walking over to it.

It felt difficult to move, like he was trying to walk underwater.

Some part of him had always seemed to know his father was still alive. He had spent countless hours staring out into the sunset, willing him to come back and take him away on some daring adventure.

Now the fantasy was mocking him.

His father had never cared about him at all. He was just a monster who wanted to use him for his own ends.

It felt like his mind was completely rewiring itself, each step altering some part of his brain as it wrapped itself around this new reality. Who was he?

Was it his destiny to turn to evil like Vader, to join him and rule together with the same cruelty as the Emperor? To burn away everything that was good in the galaxy and become someone who dismembered those closest to him, just like his father had done to him?

He felt like he was back on Bespin. He wasn’t sure if it was the memory or present as the scream tore from his throat.

“NOOOOOOOO!”

Taking a deep breath, he tried to steady himself for a moment before reaching into the force.

Closing his eyes, he wrapped his senses around the TIE and began to lift.

He felt it rise up over his head. Elation ran through him, until he realised it wasn’t much heavier than one of the larger crates he had been practicing levitating back and forth.

He could feel the shock radiating off Wedge and Leia in the background. He didn’t have long before they were going to come over and try to interrupt him, so he certainly wasn’t interested in standing there awkwardly waiting for the weight of the TIE to drain his energy reserves. How long would it take? Five minutes? Ten?

He cast his mind back to the twisted scrap of metal Han had found earlier in his dorm. He had wanted to tell him the truth, but the words got stuck in his throat, his inner voice mocking him as it rang out in his ears:

 _So, you know how everyone is frightened of the rumours that Darth Vader can crush a person’s windpipe without even touching them? Turns out I can do that too, except on a piece_ metal _. Oh, and if I have that kind of ability, then by extension that means Vader can do it too. And how do I know that? No reason. Coooool? Yeah ok bye._

Gritting his teeth, he began to squeeze the TIE.

The Dark eagerly rushed up to meet him, but he pushed it away. That wasn’t what he wanted.

He just needed to feel - tired.

The training from Yoda kicked in and instead of ‘pushing’ he just focused on it sinking and collapsing in on itself of its own accord.

He felt his anger and pain start to unwind as he visualised the metal folding in on itself.

Trust in the Force.

Breathe.

Focus.

Believe.

A wave of weakness washed over him. He suddenly felt his strength draining at a much faster rate. Good, it was working.

Dimly, he was aware of people shouting, calling his name, but he didn’t really care. As long as no one was stupid enough to run _under_ the TIE.

He could feel his grip on it slipping, his mind becoming painfully aware of the lack of proper meals and exercise over the past three weeks.

Heaving a shuddering sigh the TIE dropped from his grasp.

Pure adrenaline coursed through him. It was like when he’d flung himself from the top of building without a parachute and used the Force to slow his decent.

He dropped to his knees and braced himself as he fought to get his breath back.

He felt… _hungry._

Ever since he got back, it felt like he just couldn’t eat anything. He would take a few bites, but then everything would just shut down and scream at him to stop. He would try to force himself to keep going but he often wouldn’t be able to get through more than half his meal before he just had to stop.

But now…

It was like he’d somehow ripped through the lethargic veil that had settled over him, and so many deadened thoughts and sensations were pouring back in.

“Luke!”

He turned his head and opened his eyes.

Leia was rushing over towards him, her eyes wide and her hair frazzled, Wedge tailing right on her heel.

“WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT??” she shouted.

He jumped up and shifted back with a start.

There, practically smoking in a ball in front of him, was the wreckage of the TIE fighter. Crushed glass from the cockpit littered the floor, the wings twisted and wrapped tightly around the compressed center, the result essentially the size of an undamaged cockpit.

It was a literally a _sphere_ . 

“What the — ahh,” he stuttered.

 _“YOU HAVE ONLY BEGUN TO DISCOVER YOUR POWER,”_ the memory from Bespin supplied helpfully.

“I — ah, ahem, didn’t know I could do that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quotes from Vader (or him talking) in this fic are in ALL CAPS to signify him talking through his badass vocoder.


	5. Chapter 5

“I — ah, ahem, didn’t know I could do that.”

Leia stopped short of Luke and the TIE and just stood there, rooted to the ground.

It was as if halfway through he had stopped exerting some external force around it that was crushing it and simply ignited a miniature gravity well inside it, and just watched it effortlessly collapse in on itself.

She dug her fingers through her hair and twisted her hands through the strands in some vain effort to help her brain scramble to catch up with what she just saw.

She didn’t have the guts to approach the … smoking thing that Luke had just demolished any further. She looked away and stared at Luke, trying to compute just how this scrawny little pilot had managed to turn the Laws of Physics inside out.

He shrank back under her stare, but then pulled out the peach from his overall pocket and took a big bite. He then flashed her his most innocent farmboy smile.

“It’s been getting very cluttered in here, I was just cleaning up in here a little bit. I didn’t want this TIE to take up too much space.”

He took another bite and began positioning himself awkwardly in front of it, as if he could obscure it from their view.

“Karking space rocks!” exclaimed Wedge. “You picked it up and crushed it like it was tissue paper! Stars, Luke, that was like the craziest thing I’ve ever seen you do with the Force, like ever!”

Luke looked at Wedge with relief although his eyes kept flickering to Leia with a wary look in them.

“I’ve seen you practicing on the scraps of durasteel you’ve brought to our dorm before, but this is on a whole other level!”

Flinging all apprehension aside, Wedge ran straight up the the wrecked TIE and began running his hands all over it.

“It’s like —a, a … sculpture!” he proclaimed. “Yes, yes I can see it.”

“I —” Luke paused and smiled for a second, as if seeing the absurdity of the situation. “Yes, I think it is.”

“Just like those fancy _modern_ sculptures in the Imperial Gallery of Fine Arts. All those subtle and deep layers of imperceptible meaning woven into everything, inaccessible to anyone who lacks the proper education and extensive narrative context,” Wedge continued. 

“See the way the wing folds on itself just here?” he gave Luke a wink. “That means ‘Kriff the Emperor’, doesn’t it?”

She could see Luke pause for a moment, and this time the grin broke out all over his face. 

“Yes, it does,” he began, warming in on the plot. “And this fold means ‘Kriff him for always trying to overshadow my birthday with his useless celebrations’ - they don’t measure up.”

The two of them laughed and Wedge clapped him on the back. “What are you going to call it?”

“Well,” Luke paused dramatically for a few seconds.

“Larry,” he proclaimed.

Leia’s com buzzed. “Is everything alright in there, Princess?”

“Oh yes,” she replied, a hint of mischief lacing her voice.

“Not to worry, Luke has just decided that a little bit of art therapy is just what he needs to help him recover from his traumatic ordeal on Bespin. He’s just finished putting together a lovely little sculpture from the abandoned TIE fighter that’s been sitting here, you really must come see it.”

She ended the call and nodded at the two of them.

“If you’ll excuse me, I need to pack up the holo-directory and ~~have a mental breakdown~~ attend to some things.”

Leia dropped her data datapad and rubbed her eyes and sighed. She had discreetly copied the last set of articles Luke had been looking at onto her datapad before she sealed the holo-directory back into its crate.

Now she sat in her office pouring over the article he had fixated on, hoping for some sort of clue that could put her right as to what set him off.

What had just _happened_? She knew Luke’s training would have increased his Force abilities, but she thought it would be more of an increase in the specifics of his ‘intuition’ or ‘feelings’ he seemed to get.

Like if they were sneaking through a set of a tunnels and he suddenly _knew_ which way to go, but his explanation would be upgraded from ‘I don’t think we should go that way, I have a bad feeling about it, but I don’t know why’, to ‘We should not go what way because there is a Stormtrooper standing right outside the exit with three rocket launchers and his name is Brian.’

Rather than — crumpling entire snub fighters with his mind.

She re-read the article again for the umpteenth time. This was it. It had to be. This was what set him off. There had to be some clue here, some piece of context he had that she was missing.

Surely, the reason he had … snapped … like that, was because he had found something that confirmed the awful things that Vader had said to him.

One of those things was that Obi-Wan had killed or at least fatally injured Anakin Skywalker. Discovering that his friend and mentor, was responsible for his father’s death, would certainly be a likely candidate for causing his agonised scream in the hangar.

But how had Luke deduced that from the brief bits of the the article he had skimmed?

At an initial reading, one would think it would be enough to read between the lines and come away with the assumption that Anakin didn’t die at his hands?

She narrowed her eyes. There _wasn’t_ any mention of Anakin’s death, bad-blood, or falling out with Obi-Wan in any of these articles.

No record of an exile or him committing crimes against the Jedi. Ok, maybe the underground pod racing was frowned upon, but that looked like it had fascinated Luke, not put him off. Anakin had got off with a slap on the wrist for that too.

So perhaps that part wasn’t correct. What else had Luke said? _“He wasn’t who I thought he was.”_

Maybe his father wasn’t actually the famous Jedi Anakin Skywalker?

She scrolled up and stared at the image of him at the top of the article. He certainly looked a _lot_ like Luke. Unless…

She pulled out a holo she had of Luke before his run-in with the Wampa and subsequent skull fracture. The result had changed the way his face looked slightly. She set it down and compared it against the image in her datapad. Nope he looked even more like Luke now.

So there couldn’t have been any case of mistaken identity with the Jedi Anakin _not_ being his father and it being some space pirate that Obi-Wan had killed instead.

What was she missing?

She checked the date, and did the mental calculations to convert it into the Empire’s calendar. This was published one week before Empire day. One week before she was born and the Republic died.

She repeated the title of the article aloud to herself, trying to think of any possible perspective she might have missed.

_“Anakin Skywalker crash-lands Separatist flagship onto Coruscant senate plaza, rescuing Chancellor Palpatine from kidnapping attempt.”_

Separatist? Maybe his father had been a Separatist spy? It might explain how he knew how to land the ship, or how he had managed to sneak onboard in the first place. But why would he still rescue the Chancellor then? Was he playing both sides?

She opened the next article.

_“Anakin Skywalker awarded a seat on the Jedi Council for their bravery and heroic rescue of the Chancellor.”_

Ah. That’s why. Information.

She jumped over to the next article.

_”General Kenobi kills General Grievous”_

_Lightsaber-wielding Separatist felled by Kenobi’s blade - is the war over at last?_

A chill ran through her. General Grievous? Would that have been Anakin’s Separatist identity? Is that how he died? 

She tried to skip further, but this was the last article. 

Nothing dated past it.

She took a deep breath and continued reading.

As she scrolled she came to an image of a cyborg that was identified as the General. It was essentially a brain and a bunch of organs in a droid’s body.

Ok, nope, that thing was definitely not possible for Skywalker to moonlight as his Separatist identity.

Dead ends.

She frowned. She thought of the other holo-searches Luke had made.

_Darth Vader_

He had been confused at his absence in the records, almost like he was expecting him to be there. That in itself was interesting. She drummed her fingers on her desk.

Hardly anyone knew anything about Darth Vader. Many people thought he was a droid with an artificial breathing sound added. Or maybe he was a droid with a selection of organs that still remained functional, with some kind of interface connected to them that allowed him to access the Force through them? Luke had told her something about it only being possible for living things to access the Force.

Had he escaped from the same lab they had cooked up Grievous? But that would mean the Separatists created him, not the Republic. Why would he serve the Empire? No, that didn’t make sense.

She heard rumours that people had been trying to make clones of the Emperor on Kamino to preserve his legacy, but with hardly any success. The problem was that nearly all force-sensitive clones had extensive birth defects that killed them before they were decanted, and those that didn’t died almost directly afterwards.

But what if Vader had survived? A clone that had severe breathing issues and damage or absence of its vocal cords, yes, but not fatal enough for it to die after being decanted before they could equip it with a suitable breathing apparatus and place it in the life support suit, enabling it to overcome the odds and survive.

After that, perhaps the horror of his condition stayed the scientists hands from creating another, or perhaps Vader himself destroyed the lab he was created in and personally ensured no one like that was ever created again, which explained why there wasn’t an _army_ of Vaders out there for them to kill, or a new heir for the Empire.

Besides, not a single clone had left Kamino since the clone wars, anyway.

This was all very interesting. So if there weren’t any records of him or his early life before the Empire rose to power, then surely it gave credence to those theories that he was somehow cooked up in a lab somewhere?

Hmmm.

Was it Vader’s fate they disagreed on? Had Anakin discovered him, this twisted creature bred for darkness, and wanted to kill it? Or use it?

Perhaps Obi-Wan had disagreed fought and injured Anakin, but was forced to flee from Vader as the clone or droid finished Luke’s father off?

She dimly remembered Luke telling her a few years ago that he thought that Vader had killed his father, so such a scenario would make sense.

If Anakin Skywalker had been responsible for discovering and unleashing Vader on the world, then perhaps that was why Luke was so upset? The final piece that explained why Luke’s father wasn’t a good person, and why Obi-Wan had ended up turning on him.

Just then her comlink beeped.

“Mon, how are you? Good to hear from you,” she answered.

“Princess, how are you? Concerning the odd … sculpture Luke created today… it gave me an idea. I would like to discuss it with you.”


End file.
